Phillies Scoop: Utley, Howard still can't get back on track

By DENNIS DEITCH

Wednesday, June 12, 2013

MINNEAPOLIS -- Charlie Manuel is frustrated. Understandably so.

His team entered Wednesday night's game against the Twins having lost four straight games. His offense, once among the league's most imposing, has become impotent despite the emergence of Domonic Brown.

And his cleanup hitter can't hit home runs anymore.

That topic was a sore spot for Manuel when he was asked -- not for the first time -- if he had given thought to Ryan Howard and the power drain he has experienced thanks in part to a sore left knee.

"How many runs did we score last night?" Manuel said, referring to Tuesday's 3-2 loss. "He knocked in one of them. What the - - - - are you getting at? Who's going to hit there?

"I don't know how much (the knee) affects him, but I can see where it would be very common for that to happen. Sometimes when you're not hitting good and you're not getting balls up in the air and things like that ... home runs are hard to hit.

"When you go 100 at-bats without hitting a home run, it means you hadn't hit a well-hit fly ball that comes down behind the fence."

After a spring training in 2012 that had Chase Utley and Howard clearly on their way to long stints on the disabled list, this spring had been different.

Utley's knees were under control. Howard's left leg, which included a surgically repaired Achilles' tendon, had a chance to muscle up after severe atrophy. Both players made it through the Grapefruit League seeming more like their former selves.

Then Howard's knee began to ache, and Utley felt a twinge in his rib cage taking swings in batting practice. And an offense that has so little room for error when healthy became even more painfully flawed.

Howard has played through his knee problem, one that may or may not be related to a frayed ligament that popped up on an MRI. However, he entered Wednesday night's game against the Twins with one home run in his last 100 at-bats -- and that one homer was a slicing wall-scraper that landed in the flower boxes down the left-field line at Citizens Bank Park May 29.

He has been a shadow of the man who has homered once every 13.7 at-bats for his career. This season that average has more than doubled (30.7 AB per HR).

Jimmy Rollins is as tight with Howard as anyone. Even he isn't certain how much the knee is the root of the trouble. What he does know is that Howard's power outage is a huge loss for the offense.

"It's important for us to get some power," Rollins said. "Obviously we would like him to be up there around 19, 20 home runs right about now. That would be a big difference for him, and it would be a big difference for our record, too, because he doesn't hit solo home runs. He hits them with guys on base in big situations.

"The only one who really knows how much pain he's going through is him. People are hurt all the time. But when you have something going on (structurally), it changes your swing, changes your approach -- not just your hitting approach, but mentally what you can and can't do without pain."

There was a time, four years ago, where you could sit in the seats at Citizens Bank Park, look at the Phillies' starting infield and seriously consider whether you were watching three future Hall-of-Fame players at work.

Howard, Utley and Rollins were fresh off a World Series win. Howard had won a National League Most Valuable Player award, a Rookie of the Year, and was about to reach 200 home runs in the fewest games played of any player in baseball history. Utley was on his way to a fourth straight Silver Slugger award as the league's best offensive second baseman and was a staple in the top five in the sabermetric community's beloved WAR statistic.

When you perused Baseball-Reference.com's addictive "Similarity Scores" list that sized up a player's stats with those of other players in history, that trio's numbers lined up with those of guys with the last names McCovey, McGwire, Sandberg, Trammell, Kent and Rosen.

If you were to ask around in 2009 which of that trio was the most questionable to find a place in Cooperstown, it assuredly would have been Rollins. Today, he might be considered the one with the best shot of getting there.

"If you're not on the field, you can't put up numbers," Rollins said. "And if you're on the field but not healthy, you can play, but you're not going to be who you are. It takes luck. It's not like you're hurt, healthy, then all the way back. ... You almost have to rediscover what made you successful and discipline yourself in that regard. Sometimes that's hard to do."

Utley still doesn't have a date set to start a rehabilitation assignment in the minors. The Phils hope to have him back before the start of July. There's no telling where Howard's knee problem will lead him. Domonic Brown had knee issues last season that seemed to ring similar to what Howard is enduring -- not bad enough for the DL, but serious enough to make a guy clearly with power potential lose it.

All Manuel can do is hope it reappears.

"I'm sure he's trying to get going, and we've been trying to get him going," Manuel said. "Our hitting coaches spend time with him every day. I usually talk with him every day. I don't know what else to do. I put you out and let you play, and you're the guy doing the playing.

"Utley definitely came to spring training in good shape, Howard definitely got into good shape in spring training. The work was as good as any year I've been there. ... But in some ways, baseball is baseball. Just because you hit yesterday doesn't mean you're going to hit today, and just because you hit last year doesn't mean you're going to hit this year."